Afin de clarifier les explications et pour poser le probléme dans son contexte, voici tout d'abord une reproduction du Questionnaire, dont les éléments ont été distingués en sous-groupes, et numérotés. La liste se subdivise en A, “mots séparés” et B, “mots dans une phrase”.

Any theory of semantics must account for the role of inference in the interpretation of a sentence, however, it is not clear at which level of the grammar this inferencing capability must be represented. In Sperber and Wilson (1986) for example, inference plays an important role in the interpretation of an utterance in discourse, yet their theory does not integrate lexical representations with discourse and inferencing. Jackendoff (1987, 1990) on the other hand, while giving explicit representations for sentences and lexical items, does not address the question of discourse and inference. In this paper I will argue that it is essential to take account of discourse-level factors when analyzing sentence meaning, and indeed word meaning. In particular I will show that the meaning of the auxiliary verb fεla. in Bengali can be properly represented only if such discourse-level factors are included.

The findings presented here are part of a pilot study of the vocabulary of English-speaking residents of Alberta. The study was carried out in 1953 and 1954 with the aid of a number of my students who took the responsibility of getting written answers to several hundred copies of a brief questionnaire. The items in the questionnaire were of a general nature; although, since Alberta is greatly concerned with agriculture, some emphasis was placed on terms connected with the farm and with life on the farm. All informants were notified of the purpose for which the answers would be used, and they were asked to give as their answers the names of buildings and so on which they would normally use in their everyday work and talk. Sample questions follow: What command do you give to make a horse turn to the left? What do you call the buildings where pigs are kept?

The notion ‘drift’ plays an important role in the development of the modals have to and must in early Canadian English in relation to British and American English during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Have to is first found in texts that reflect informal usage, and for the period in question (1750–1849), have to is only attested with deontic readings; the data suggest that its rise was not exclusively conditioned by the defective paradigm of must. Must maintains its epistemic function in relation to its Late Modern English competitors. In early Canadian English, changes progress gradually, with individual variables following different directions. Canadian English epistemic must lags behind, while deontic have to has spread more quickly in North America, with Canadian English more progressive than British English varieties, but less so than American English. Within a more general drift towards have to, Canadian English shows independent development in successive periods.

Montagnais, an Algonquian language spoken in Quebec, exists in a number of different dialects. The main divisions are on a geographic basis, with western, eastern, and southern Montagnais, and within each of these varieties sub-dialects centered on specific communities like Pointe Bleu, Betsiamites, or Natashquan. In addition, within each community there may be other dialectal distinctions based on age, socio-economic factors, or elements as specialized as the location of traditional family hunting grounds, grounds in which one need no longer hunt to still have them considered family territory. One such community is the reserve town of Betsiamites, also known as Bersimis. The most notable dialectal division there is one based on age : there is a dialect of people over 60; one of people between 40 and 60; and one of those under 40. In addition, there seems to be a conservative/innovative split that cuts across the age-based dialect split, which itself is based on innovations in the speech of younger speakers, and which does not seem to be correlated with any social or political distinction, but only with phonological change and retention in relation to earlier forms of Montagnais and Proto-Algonquian itself. In the innovative dialect, sibilant-stop clusters consist uniformly of [š] plus a stop; or, in the case of young innovative speakers, a development therefrom. In the conservative dialect, sibilant-stop clusters are found in complementary neutralization: before [t] there occurs only [s]; before [p] and [k] there occurs only [š], no matter what was the source of the first or second element of the cluster in Proto-Algonquian (PA).

Perhaps the most pervasive issue in the study of adult second language (L2) acquisition concerns the relative contribution of prior first language (L1) experience — the contrastive component — and universal grammatical principles — the constructive component — to this language learning process. Concern with this issue stems in part from basic linguistic and psychological questions about the nature of language learning in the adult and in part from the desire to integrate these two components within a framework that can provide for a unified theory of language learning in general. Current research within the field endeavors to isolate and quantify each of these two components in the adult L2 learning process.

Within this context, this paper reports results of an experimental study of the acquisition of anaphora in structures such as in (1) and (2).

• (1) Alice helped Mary when she walked through the garden.

• (2) Alice helped Mary when walking through the garden.